Read an interview on Noise For Heroes site!
Following reviews were originally published in Noise For Heroes magazine Fall 1991 issue pp. 62-63 (USA).
This is the most ferocious rock and roll record I've heard in quite a while. From Finland, Dead Allison play a stark, hard rock and roll that's rendered harsh as the polar winter by the almost evil sounding vocal job. The lp covered features a closeup of black leopard snarling, and it's about as apt a picture as you could ask for. The thing that makes Dead Allison so good at this is that the intensity feels totally natural. The singer isn't screaming; he just sings in this dry, hoarse voice thoughout. The band behind him plays a wicked, cold and hard brand of rock and roll that owes a lot to the Stooges but sounds much more updated than most Stooges-derivative bands. Dead Allison's relation to the Stooges is on the punk side, too, and not on the metal side like cretin bands like Thee Hypnotics (the fact that both these band can be compared to the stooges shows how useless the comparison is becoming). Dead Allison have taken the influence and expanded it: they've injected more punkish energy, more hardness and an overlay of wildly psychedelic wah-wah'ed giutar that adds to the feeling of impending mayhem when you play this lp. The progression of songs on the record just goes from strength to strength: Uli Hesse of Hartbeat said that every song on it could be a single A side, and I woundn't disagree one bit. You can tell that this has got to be a great band, too, from the fact that as tight and well produced as this record sounds, it took only four days to do it. An untogether band could never have pulled anything like this in that kind of time. And altough I've been emphsizing the harshness and the intensity of the music, it's not like a bunch of uncontrolled anger...these songs are very focused, with very strong, hard hooks. It's a rare combination, especially at suhc a consistently high level. A great record and worth the search. (PO Box 361, 00121 Helsinki, Finland)
OK, if Toys And Dreams wasn't enough, now here's their brand new second album. And unlike the standard lp let down that many bands suffer through, the second coming of Dead Allison is every bit the powerhouse rush of their first one. Singer St. Francis sounds like he's smoked half the tobacco in North Carolina to get his voice to sound this harsh, and the band is right with him with the nastiest snarling guitars, throbbign bass and precision hard hitting drums. This stuff is dangerous sounding. And it's also packed with songs that are memorable and varied from one to the next. There's no filler; it just cuts from one slammer to the next. Awesome stuff. (PO Box 361, 00121 Helsinki, Finland)